Buckley Public Service Scholars
Launched in 2003, the Walter White Buckley Jr. Public Service Scholars program (BPSS) provides a framework for undergraduate students committed to making a positive impact through service. BPSS challenges participants to expand their understanding of service, connect academic and community-based experiences and build their capacity to help effect change. While completing the program components, participants build portfolios reflecting their learning and unique experiences throughout North Carolina, the nation and the world.
Why Enroll?
- Special service and learning opportunities
- Notation on your official UNC Chapel Hill transcript
- BPSS graduation ceremony in Memorial Hall
- Certificate with your name
- Unique white and Carolina blue graduation cord
Eligibility
- All undergraduate students with at least four semesters remaining at Carolina can enroll in the Buckley Public Service Scholars program. Transfer students must have three semesters remaining to enroll.
Program Components
- One orientation session
- 300 hours of public service over your four years at Carolina
- One service-learning course (your choice!)
- Four skills trainings
- One senior reflection project
- Minimum cumulative GPA (of 3.0 or above Buckley Public Service Scholar and 2.5-2.9 for Special Recognition in Public Service)
Throughout the program, scholars log their progress in the Buckley Portfolio, a database system that allows you to keep accurate records of your service involvement and training.
Portfolio Updates (as of July 18, 2024)
We are currently transitioning to a new BPSS Portfolio interface. For students who have already enrolled, all service projects and skills trainings will be transferred to our new portfolio this summer. To log into our new portal, visit https://uncch.givepulse.com. If you have any questions, please email bpss@unc.edu.
Program Component Details
When can I enroll in BPSS?
Enrollment is always open for UNC undergraduated students at https://uncch.givepulse.com. Newly enrolled BPSS participants can begin building their portfolios by logging completed service hours and registering for skills trainings even before attending an orientation.
What’s the first step to getting involved with BPSS?
The first thing you should do is sign up for a BPSS Orientation. During this time, we will review program components in detail and discuss public service in depth.
I just enrolled in BPSS but cannot attend an orientation session this semester. Can I still participate?
Yes! BPSS participants must attend an orientation session within the first two semesters of being enrolled in the program. You can begin completing service hours and attending skills trainings even before attending an orientation. The current orientation dates are available on GivePulse.
How often do I need to log service hours?
We encourage you to log service hours on GivePulse by the last day of class in the semester in which they occur. Although, this is no longer a requirement of the program, it’s encouraged to keep your portfolio as accurate as possible.
What counts as service?
CCPS uses the term public service to describe the application of knowledge, skills and resources for the common good. Correspondingly, we recognize that a wide variety of paid and unpaid work can fall under the description of public service. Students wondering if something could be considered public service should reflect upon how exactly you and your community defines public service, what motivates you to do the activity and whom it ultimately will impact.
In order for something to be logged and count for the purposes of BPSS, the activity typically must be connected to or benefit a community-based nonprofit organization, a government agency or a campus community service organization.
Still unsure? Here’s a framework we hope will help: Beginning with orientation, we encourage you to think about and participate in three different dimensions of service: direct service, policy-based service and organizational service.
- Direct service could be described as hands on activities that give some form of direct assistance to particular people or communities.
- Policy-based service is less direct and focuses more on social systems and how communities or the larger society are organized.
- Organizational service deals with activities that support the existence and administration of an organization that provides more direct or policy-based services.
Using these distinctions as a tool, we challenge you to consider how your service activities fit into the broader picture of public service. We hope you will seek to incorporate all three of these types of service into your experiences in BPSS. You should be able to articulate exactly why the work that you log in the Buckley Portfolio is public service.
What does not count as service?
There are some things that should not be counted as service for the purposes of BPSS. These include:
- Service hours completed before the student is enrolled as a Carolina student
- Travel time to and from service sites
- Work that is associated with promoting, educating, or converting others to a specific religion
- Work that does not fit with your own vision of public service
Receiving payment does not exclude an activity from being considered service for the purposes of BPSS.
For overnight or multi-day service experiences (such as alternative spring break and summer camp counseling) you may record a maximum of 12 hours per day, if a full 12 hours were spent doing service each day. Hours spent planning or coordinating prior to the actual event may be counted in addition to the 12 daily hours.
Where can I find service opportunities?
Students looking for organizations to serve with or volunteer openings can visit GivePulse to explore the local, off-campus and campus organizations to service with. This platform offers several events and organizations for students to get involved with.
You should also sign up for the Public Service News for a weekly digest of local service and program opportunities!
Participants in BPSS are not only involved in public service activities but also actively seek opportunities to develop skills that will make you better prepared for that public service and more useful to your community partners. In order to successfully complete the program, you must complete and log at least four approved skills trainings.
BPSS has identified the following 10 skill areas as important to effective and responsible engagement in public service:
- Advocacy and community organizing
- Diversity and cultural awareness
- Effective communication
- Ethics and leadership
- Evaluation and applied research
- Financial management
- Fundraising, grant writing and philanthropy
- Planning and assessment
- Service-specific training
- Social entrepreneurship and innovation
In order to be approved for BPSS, a skills training must relate to one of these skills areas. A skills training may be on or off campus and can take the form of a workshop, a conference or non-academic course. The training must be interactive, activity-based and designed for participants to build and practice skills. Events where students simply learn information or gain awareness (such as through a lecture, panel or presentation) would not count as a skills training for the purposes of BPSS. Academic and professional conferences should count only as one skills training rather than a series of separate trainings.
What are some specific examples of skills trainings?
BPSS offers many different skills trainings for students to register for each semester, however, many skills trainings that BPSS participants log in their Buckley Portfolios are not sponsored by CCPS. Some examples of other on-campus trainings, series and conferences that have met (or included workshops that met) the skills training requirements in the past are:
- Carolina Green Event Certification Trainings
- CUBE Innovation Incubator Workshop Series
- EcoReps Skills Trainings
- Embody Carolina
- Functional Leadership Workshop Series
- HAVEN (Helping to Advocate Violence Ending Now) Training
- Launching the Venture
- OneAct Trainings
- Rethink Psychiatric Illness
- Safe Zone Trainings
- SCALE’s Read. Write. Act. Conference
- SkillsfUL Tech Workshops at the Undergraduate Library
- STRETCH Conference
- UNITY Conference
- UNC Minority Health Conference
How do I record my completed skills trainings?
Any skills trainings offered by BPSS will have attendance marked on GivePulse automatically and will count towards your BPSS components. If a participants attends a non-BPSS skills trainings, they must be logged by the BPSS participant in GivePulse.
Participants in BPSS seek to connect their public service involvement with their academic experiences while at Carolina. BPSS participants must complete and log one service-learning course in order to successfully complete the program. A service-learning course is a credit-bearing academic course that:
- Requires students to participate in at least 30 hours of service
- Facilitates students’ reflection on their service experience
- Connects students’ service experience with the course’s academic goals
- Requires students to complete a capstone project or reflection paper and the end of the course
The most up-to-date service-learning course list for current and upcoming terms is posted on the APPLES Service-Learning Courses page. Service-learning courses that satisfy the Experiential Education requirement for graduation can also be found through searching the course attribute “CON-E3 – Service Learning” in ConnectCarolina.
What is a BPSS pre-approved service-learning course?
All APPLES service-learning courses are pre-approved by BPSS. Several other CCPS programs involve academic courses that count as service-learning courses for BPSS, including:
- APPLES spring and summer internships
- APPLES alternative spring break experiences
- APPLES Bryan Social Innovation Fellowships
- Philanthropy as a Tool for Social Change course
- SMART Mentoring
- HBEH 411: Effective Community Engagement
Can I submit a course that’s not already pre-approved?
Yes! If students would like to submit for an existing course not already in the list of pre-approved courses to count for BPSS, they must submit the course syllabus and any other relevant course documentation through the service-learning course report form in Buckley Portfolio. Successful submissions include existing courses that meet the requirements but are not listed as service-learning courses, independent studies with service-learning components, the addition of a service-learning component to an existing course that is approved by the instructor and involves a final paper reflecting on the service-learning components of the course or a non-UNC-Chapel Hill course that fits the service-learning course requirements.
In order to graduate as a BPSS, you must submit a graduation application in GivePulse during the semester you are graduating from UNC. All of BPSS components must be completed before you submit your graduation application. The only exception is the service-learning course, which you can be enrolled in and working towards completing when you submit your graduation application. For spring semester graduates, graduation applications will be due in February. For fall semester graduates, graduation applications will be due in October.
While reflection is a continuous part of a student’s participation in BPSS, participants are required to submit a senior reflection during one of your final two semesters before graduation in order to successfully complete the program. The reflection will challenge you to articulate your philosophy of service and how it has developed over the years in response to the experiences you logged in your Buckley Portfolio. A BPSS graduate assistant or CCPS staff member will review and provide an individualized response and feedback to each student submission in order to help you make meaning from your experiences in the program.
You will receive information about the exact prompt and deadlines early in the fall semester of your senior year. Contact bpss@unc.edu with questions about this process or if you are a senior and have not received information about how to complete your senior reflection.
Scholar, you also have access to several optional (and fun!) opportunities for service and engagement.
Some BPSS alumni participated in a study about the program’s connections to their careers. Learn more by reading the study in the Journal of Community Engagement and Higher Education!
Are you a Buckley Public Scholar participant looking for service opportunities, community news and resources for your work? Subscribe to our weekly Public Service Newsletter for all that and more sent straight to your inbox?
The Carolina Center for Public Service at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for its events and programs. If you need accommodations, please contact BPSS or call 919-843-6616. Every reasonable effort will be made to implement accommodations in an effective and timely manner.